The Copyright Mafia is going to greater and greater lengths to take ownership of American culture. First there is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which effectively allows electronics manufactures to own our equipment even after they have sold it to us. This past week, we received news that reminded us that the Feds are serious about enforcing this new form of ownership:
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency conducted a huge nationwide raid yesterday against shops and homes selling video game "mod chips" -- the chips that make consoles play games that manufacturers don't authorize (including pirated games).
And to make it worse, Google and friends point out that several media companies have been deceitfully undermining our fair use rights, by forcefully claiming that such rights do not exist:
The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) announced today that it has filed a Federal Trade Commission complaint on behalf of consumers against Major League Baseball, the National Football League, NBC/Universal and several other corporations. CCIA alleges that the named corporations have misled consumers for years, often misrepresenting their rights through deceptive and threatening statements.
When explaining why this deception matters (Machinist at Salon.com), the President of the CCIA gave this rather quaint rationale:
More than that, though, the warnings harm copyright law itself. When the NFL argues that you need its permission to provide "accounts of the game" to your friends, "the effect of that is people will see the law as stupid," Black says. "And that does not bring respect to the law."
Unfortunately, Congress itself delegitimized copyright law in 1998 when it passed the Mickey Mouse Protection Act Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which retroactively extended the time period over which the Copyright mafia can extort money Americans. The retroactive nature of the extension matters because it undermines the Constitutional justification for Congress' power to create Copyright:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries
How can a retroactive term extension promote progress? The progress had already been made! Effectively, Congress had offered a deal to artists/inventors to encourage them to do this work : "provide this work to the public, and you will get sole control over it for X years.". But in 1998 Congress changed the terms of the deal -- but it made no attempt to get a better deal for the public, Congress simply threw more money at the artists (or more accurately, the politically-connected speculators who had bought the copyrights from the artists).
In this act, Congress revealed itself to be a part of an organized criminal class, and it revealed Copyright Law to be nothing more than cheap rhetoric meant to confuse the American public while we are being fleeced. Perhaps we should console ourselves with the fact that the American ruling class is not as ruthlessly exploitative as their European counterparts, who went as far as to revive expired copyrights.
Congress has to do a lot do to reassure us that Copyright is a legitimate tool serving the public interest. A good start would be to pass the Public Domain Enhancement Act, or some similar legislation.